Colony manager

TA has a planetary governor function as of 2.0 which sounds very similar to what you're asking for, i.e. when a new colony is acquired you assign a governor to it and it will build the list of queued improvements, but I'm not certain that it meets all of your needs-nor have I actually bothered to use or test it myself.

I dont know that I have a list of requirements as much of, I don't want to spend all my time managing my colonies buildings, and I dont want the colonies to suck.

The new 'governor' feature is just a simple way to create and apply a standard build queue, and IMO it is neither very easy to use nor that much of a help when you use it. At least it wasn't for me. There is no automatic aspect to the feature, if that's what you were hoping--you define queues and assign them, and you have to update them as you gain new techs.

Actually, I think that queue thing would be perfect for me.  At least if that queue lets me use the old buildings to build up to new buildings, I heard the new versions let you build lower tech versions of buildings, which would be so nice with things like the really advanced factories. I will look into this.

Good point-in DL, you could only build the most current tech, but yes, you were informed correctly-in DA and TA you can choose to build any improvement that you have access to, regardless of how old it is-they're in a separate tab in the build list labeled Old (or you can access everything via the All tab).

All that's missing for that Colony-Governor is a way for us to make our choices resilient between games by having some reusable template xml file(s) that are either saved as such to fit specific tasks (focus on production, concentrate on economy, raise morale, etc) or adhere to comprehensive principles as we so wish to select or define DURING gameplay or simply, outside of it all. AIs find their ways, so should we.

There's also the matter of tech pace or path patterns in multiple variations, but i'm almost sure the intuitive listing of a proper sequence can be parsed at runtime and altered by a function when certain situations occur or if we would want it to.

Knowing the exact number of tiles by PQ evaluation and its terraforming results then, becomes a matter of logic rather than having to inspect HUGE amounts of planets to determine the next PI(s) to queue-in.

Trick is to integrate Bonus tiles and SP and GA stuff, though.

Excellent good to know, I just finished supreme commander so I think its time for another impulse buy.  Pun intended.